


A handful of hopeful words

by carbonbased000



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: AUTHOR AU, Bisexual Character, Divorce, Fluff, M/M, Podfic Available, very little actual Halloween content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-22 18:38:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20878859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carbonbased000/pseuds/carbonbased000
Summary: This project was supposed to be a distraction. A novel is lifelike, whereas pop-culture-infused horror short stories have nothing to do with the mess that is his life and that’s good. That’s the point. So Pete was kind of surprised when he found out that the Frankenstein guy was getting divorced; when the ghost story was about a dead estranged husband haunting his wife’s new house; when the mummies turned out to be gay.And then he met Patrick.





	A handful of hopeful words

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer – I actually don’t know anything about how professional writing and/or editing works in the US; expect a lot of inaccuracies, weirdness and hand-waving. That being said, thanks to [theprogressofspring](https://theprogressofspring.tumblr.com/), [Glitter](http://insecure.archiveofourown.org/users/glitterandrocketfuel) and [Egt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68) for giving me many pieces of relevant and useful information that I proceeded to mostly ignore; HUGE ALL-CAPS THANKS to [Snitches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers) and [AmberleDb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmberleDb/pseuds/AmberleDb) for reading this over and encouraging me to keep writing.
> 
> Title is from _Love Letter_ by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
> 
> March 2020 UPDATE – this story has now a wonderful and amazing [podfic version](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23420116) recorded by the wonderful and amazing [AerPods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aer/pseuds/AerPods). Go listen, it is PERFECT!

Pete wakes up, gasping and drenched in cold sweat, from a nightmare where he was trapped in a crumbling house on a cliff overlooking a lagoon full of giant prehistoric crocodiles while a fucking enormous volcano was explosively erupting in the distance. Apparently, his subconscious deemed that an appropriate metaphor for his divorce. Thanks, brain.

He’s still so out of it that he almost turns towards Ashlee’s side of the bed to check that he didn’t wake her up. Then he remembers that he’s been sleeping alone for months, so he turns around and gropes for the phone on his bedside table. The blue light of the screen pierces his eyes, killing every last chance he has of going back to sleep. Fuck it. Might as well talk to someone. Or text at someone – same thing, right?

> _just had the craziest dream_  
_i mean nightmare_  
_i have dying dreams sometimes but dude this takes the cake_
> 
> _I’m sorry. You okay now?_  
_What was it about?_
> 
> _there was a volcano_  
_and fucking monster crocodiles or something_  
_and i was in this house that was falling apart_
> 
> _Hmm, subtle._  
_I don’t think we need to page Dr. Jung for this one._  
_Try and go back to sleep?_
> 
> _yeah no way_  
_the crocodiles were cool tho_  
_i could probably write a short story about it or something_
> 
> _I mean, you could. If it makes you feel better. _  
_But as your editor, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that short stories do not sell._  
_At all. No one wants them._
> 
> _noted_  
_do you like reading them tho?_
> 
> _I do, very much._  
_But my taste in literature isn’t precisely mainstream, you know. _

_ill write one just for you then_, Pete types. Then he deletes it, one letter at a time, _tap tap tap_.

> _ok ill try and go back to sleep_
> 
> _Excellent idea. Hope you get some rest._  
_Talk to you tomorrow? _
> 
> _sure_  
_sweet dreams trick_

He lied – he’s definitely not going back to sleep, but it’s not like he can keep Patrick on the phone all night. If he doesn’t keep himself in check, he might actually call him and ask him to tell him a story or sing him to sleep or something, and then where would they be. In a fucking awkward place, that’s where.

Pete puts on a pair of sweatpants, sits at his desk and presses the button behind the screen of his iMac. It chimes ominously and asks him for his password. He types, _hemingwaysucks_, waits for the home screen to load, opens Pages. _Open recent file?_, the welcome interface taunts him, like it knows he’s supposed to be working on his novel.

“Fuck off,” he tells the dialog box, and creates a new document.

* * *

It didn’t feel great when Vicky told Pete they would assign him an editor to “help him along with the process” of writing his second novel. It felt like not being trusted; like being fifteen and finding out that your parents thought you still needed a babysitter.

Pete, however, knew he was on the brink of becoming a has-been. _Take This to Your Grave_ had been a huge, unexpected success, but then he’d gone and become the poster boy for Second Novel Syndrome, failing to produce a follow-up book for several years. After too many false starts, deleted files and shredded manuscripts, he had stopped writing altogether; he was starting to believe he was just a one-hit wonder. So he said okay to the editor slash babysitter, and braced himself for months of getting bored out of his skull at weekly meetings with a middle-aged senior editor at the Penguin headquarters on Broadway.

Instead, he got an email address – “He prefers to work remotely,” Vicky told him, and Pete, whose overactive imagination was a prerequisite for his job, started mentally manufacturing a tragic backstory for this mysterious recluse editor. In the meantime, he sent to that email address everything he had, which amounted to a draft of the first chapter and a 20-page outline.

A reply popped up in his inbox a few hours later.

> _Dear Mr. Wentz,_
> 
> _I am an editor, not a ghostwriter. I do not work on unfinished drafts. Please send me the first chapter when you have actually written it._
> 
> _I have, however, added some notes to the outline. Let me know if you have any questions._
> 
> _Sincerely,  
Patrick Stump_

Pete clicked on the attachment and waited for the file to open. The Word icon bounced in the dock and the rainbow pinwheel of death started spinning. And spinning. And spinning. Finally, the file opened and Pete’s jaw actually dropped at the sheer number of comments and suggested edits that popped up in the sidebar.

“This guy is out of his fucking mind,” he told Vicky as soon as she picked up.

“Pete?”

“Yes, yes, hi, this editor guy is– he fucking sent me– Vicky. He corrected my punctuation! In an outline! And then...” Pete was scrolling down, skimming the orange balloons that cheerfully explained, _in detail_, how every single thing he’d written was wrong, wrong, wrong. “He says my main female character is, and I quote, as three-dimensional as a paper doll!”

“Well… I mean…” said Vicky, tentative. She was probably trying to spare his feelings. That, or she was trying not to laugh. “Actually, that sounds exactly like the sort of feedback you need.” Okay, so definitely not trying to spare his feelings.

“No, no, come on...he’s so _mean_.” Pete went on scrolling. There were _so many_ comments. “Here, here he says this plot point is _slush_. Who even talks like that? Is he, like, some kind of octogenarian literary genius?”

“Oh shit, I knew he would be perfect,” said Vicky, and great, now she wasn’t even trying not to laugh out loud. As soon as Pete hung up the phone, he would find himself another agent.

“Seriously, _slush_? Who even is this guy? Oh my god, is he _fucking Gordon Lish_ under a fake name?”

Vicky laughed harder and then there was a thump. “Fuck, you almost made me fall out of my chair. Pete, calm down, he’s not a sacred monster or anything, he’s just a kid we got fresh out of college.”

“But if he’s so young–”

“He’s been with our agency for more than a year, and he’s the same age you were when you wrote Grave, so don’t even start. He’s good. And if you get over yourself I think he could help you a lot.”

Pete got over himself. Pete rewrote the first chapter from scratch and sent it to the editing wunderkind, who proceeded to utterly _eviscerate him_ (though always in an achingly polite way). So Pete rewrote the chapter again, and again, until he was told it was good. And then, slowly, following the same process, he wrote more chapters, until he had a novel. He wrote and rewrote and edited and moved stuff around for ten months. He always sent everything to Patrick and waited for his comments, which were always brilliant, and helpful, and just a bit mean.

* * *

_Ding_, goes Mail, the little envelope bouncing cheerily. The unread count is unfathomable, but Pete opens the application to check, just in case it’s from Patrick (it is). They text at night, but it’s almost always emails during the day, since they both know there’s an excellent chance the other will be glued to his computer, too.

> _From: Trick _  
_To: PW _  
_**Subject:** _
> 
> _Did you get any sleep? _
> 
> _P._
> 
> _From: PW_  
_To: Trick _  
_ **Subject: Re:** _
> 
> _not much but i wrote!_
> 
> _From: Trick _  
_ To: PW  
**Subject: Re: Re: **_
> 
> _Folie? _
> 
> _P._

It’s pretty amazing how Pete can feel this amount of skepticism emanating from a one-word email. It’s not even long enough to read between the lines, seeing as there is only one line. But he can see a whole postscript in disappearing ink, white pixels on white, html color code #FFFFFF, reading “I know you’re not working on your fucking overdue novel, asshole, but I’m letting you off easy because you’re getting divorced and you’re even more of a mess than usual.” Patrick’s the kind of guy who really knows how to let his omissions speak – one of the reasons why he’s such a brilliant editor, maybe.

> _From: PW _  
_To: Trick _  
_**Subject: Re: Re: Re:** _
> 
> _nooooope but listen. i have an idea. do you like this as a title? _
> 
> _“I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color” _
> 
> _From: Trick _  
_To: PW _  
_**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re:** _
> 
> _It has a certain ring to it. Funny thing, though, someone did make a color darker than black. They called it Vantablack and it absorbs all but 0.035 percent of visual light. Pretty cool, huh. _
> 
> <https://boingboing.net/2014/07/14/scientists-create-blackest-bla.html>

Pete loses a few minutes following the link and reading the article, smiling like an idiot the whole time.

> _From: PW _  
_To: Trick _  
** _Subject: Re: Re: Re: _ **
> 
> _thats so cool, dude. how do you always know these amazing things. _
> 
> _anyway, what i was thinking is this – short story collection. all retellings of horror classics. frankenstein, lovecraft, jekyll & hyde, poe, that great ghost story by m.e. braddon, dorian gray, something with witches (can you think of anything good with witches because right now i cant think of anything but anne rice and no thanks). i already have an idea for the cover – black writing on black background. too bad we cant use that super duper black, i guess it’s just for spacesuits and stuff. _

His phone rings.

Pete gets up from his desk and feels an alarming twinge in his lower back. He stretches his arms towards the ceiling and rolls his neck before answering. “So, what do you think? It could be out for Halloween! I love Halloween.”

“You don’t say,” Patrick replies, and it’s fascinating how Pete can actually hear him roll his eyes over the phone.

“No, seriously, how do you know I love Halloween?” asks Pete, while he walks around the bedroom to stretch his legs. He’s been sitting at that damn desk way too long. He should probably drink a glass of water or, like, five.

“You’re always–” he huffs, then goes on, “Hmm, I don’t know, your Nightmare Before Christmas tattoo might be giving it away?”

“Oh, did you look up my tattoos?” Pete asks, bewildered. And delighted. But mostly bewildered. The idea of Patrick thinking about what he looks like is… weird. Because they’ve never met, and Patrick is just a voice and a bunch of pixelated words for Pete. But of course that’s not the case for Patrick – he can’t be unaware of what Pete looks like, because there are pictures of him on the back of his books, and on his Instagram, and floating around the web. So it’s weird, and a bit… unbalanced. Yeah, that’s it. The _unfairness_ of this whole situation is the only reason why the thought of Patrick looking at pictures of his tattoos has Pete frozen in the middle of filling a glass under the kitchen faucet, why the glass is now overflowing and his hand and half his sleeve are soaked.

“No. No I didn’t, not on purpose, I mean– you know you’re kind of famous, right? There are pictures. Like, on the internet.” Patrick almost sounds embarrassed, which is ridiculous – it’s not his fault if certain websites publish idiotic photogalleries titled **33 Literary Geniuses Who Happen To Be Super Hot** and more often than not Pete is included as the token non-white dude.

“Well, _famous_... like, for a writer, maybe,” Pete scoffs, mopping up the spilled water with a dishcloth.

“Anyway,” Patrick goes on after a beat of silence. “Like I told you, short stories don’t sell. Good luck getting this past Vicky.”

Pete sighs. “Yeah, but– I have the attention span of a goldfish right now.”

“You know, goldfish actually–”

As much as he cherishes Patrick’s random impromptu lectures on anything ever, he nips this particular one in the bud because he really needs to make a case for his awesome idea. “Dude, I get it, I do, we as a society are grossly misrepresenting goldfish and their attention span, but like. Do you think a goldfish could write a novel? Then my metaphor stands. Because _I can’t write a fucking novel right now!_”

“Well, you’re still a writer, and I mean, _at the very least_ you should know the difference between a metaphor and a simile,” Patrick says.

“Okay, now you’re just trying to piss me off on purpose so that I forget about my awesome idea. You know I was kidding and, like, my attention span is not actually _that_ bad, right?”

“Hmm,” Patrick replies, noncommittally.

Sometimes, when Pete is desperate enough, he will play the tortured artist card, and sometimes, if he catches Patrick in a moment of weakness, Patrick will actually let him. Hoping that this is one of those times, Pete says, “Anyway, that’s what I’m working on right now.” He says this in an exaggerated haughty voice, so that if Patrick replies with the really even tone that signals he’s getting seriously angry, Pete can still pretend he was kidding. “You can’t force inspiration, you know.”

“Okay,” Patrick breathes out, and Pete is pretty confident he can count this as a win. He toasts himself and gulps down some more water. “But I have an important question.”

“Shoot, Pattycakes.”

“Okay, now _you’re_ just trying to piss me off on purpose so that I forget my question.”

Pete spits out his water. Not a lot of it, just enough to make a really embarrassing noise that he tries to cover up with a fake cough. Patrick goes on, unaware or uncaring of Pete’s brush with death. “It’s not going to work, anyway, this is a very important question. Now, answer carefully… are there going to be vampires in this thing?”

Pete is pretty sure this is the wrong answer, but– “Of course there are going to be vampires! Who do you take me for?”

Patrick sighs. “You know, when I started doing this job I promised myself one thing. One.”

“... what thing?” asks Pete, obediently, when it becomes apparent that Patrick is not going to continue unprompted.

“_That I’d never work on a book with fucking vampires!_”

And yeah, that was indeed the wrong answer. “Well, they won't be fucking, I don’t think… unless?”

Patrick sighs again. “Fifty bucks says that your vampires are going to fuck, either with each other or with some innocent mortal. Or both.”

“Yeah, no bet. Anyway, promises are meant to be broken.”

“... that’s not how it goes, Pete.”

“It’s not? How does it go then?”

“It goes _I hate you because you’re going to make me work on a book with fucking vampires who fuck_. And I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait, Trick? I’m sending you a draft! Check your email!”

* * *

As the deadline for Pete’s second novel grew closer, and their email exchanges got progressively longer and crazier and more frantic, they started talking on the phone.

Sometimes Pete was afraid he kept Patrick on the phone too long, but Patrick seemed okay with working late into the night, and Pete always stayed up for hours after Ash went to bed, and having some company was so nice. It didn’t hurt that Patrick had a voice like a dream – like _home_, and not only because of his soft Midwestern accent. After midnight rolled around, Patrick lowered his voice and his defenses – small details about his everyday life started seeping into the long calls, and Pete hoarded them like treasure. Patrick loved Ursula K. LeGuin and Neil Gaiman and knew by heart impressively long excerpts from _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_; he liked music almost as much as literature and had a low-level obsession with Prince; he lived with two roommates in Astoria; he had grown up in the Chicago suburbs, twenty minutes and five years away from Pete. Sometimes Pete wondered if they’d ever been in the same place at the same time, back home, at a show or in the fiction aisle at a Borders or in the queue at Starbucks. Maybe if they’d actually met they would have started a band. Maybe they would have become best friends. Pete figured it was probably too late for the band. But maybe, with some luck, not for the other thing.

* * *

Pete waits all day, but Patrick doesn’t send him any comments on the (admittedly, not very coherent) draft for Black, as Pete has named his new awesome project. Just as he’s blessedly, fucking finally, almost falling asleep, he hears a string of new texts come in.

> _Hey. I like your tilt-at-windmills project (except for the vampires). _  
_I need to disappear for a few days, on a deadline for another job. _  
_Call me if you need anything, though. _  
_Oh and I sent you an email with a couple of really good short story collections I’ve read recently. For inspiration._  
_ Check it out tomorrow, though. Now you should sleep. _

Pete is barely awake, his head sinking into his pillow, his body warm and heavy under the blankets. He taps a quick reply on the screen.

> _thx love you xx_

In the morning, Pete reads Patrick’s email and calls Gabe at the bookstore, asking him to get the books Patrick recommended. Whenever Patrick tells him to check out this title or that author or that article, Pete always pictures him like a grouchy college professor, shaking his head at Pete’s amateurish attempts at writing fiction and trying to straighten him out with some sensible reading assignments.

“Fairy tales? Weird sci-fi? What the hell are you working on?” asks Gabe, laughing. “Never mind, I need to go, there is someone here who might want to buy some actual books in my bookstore. Can’t get those titles for you today, though... Saturday okay?”

“Sure, text me and I’ll come in,” says Pete, and Gabe hangs up after a hurried _later_.

Pete makes coffee, sits at his desk, and starts writing.

* * *

_From Under the Cork Tree_ spent seven weeks on the NYT bestseller list, and every single review talked about Second Novel Syndrome and treated Pete like he’d come back from the dead or something. But the sales were very good, which made the publisher happy; and most of the reviews were good, which made everyone happy; and the kids who came up to Pete at signings with their tattoos of favorite lines from _Take This To Your Grave_ were still here, older, alive, and told him they loved this book even though it was different, which to Pete was the most important thing.

Ashlee read it slowly, and told him it was “great, babe,” and they never talked about it again. It was cool, of course – it wasn’t like Pete read all the designer profiles she wrote for _Vogue_ anyway.

Pete thanked Patrick in the acknowledgments, _I couldn’t have done this without you_. He meant it. He thought he’d finally meet him in person at the launch party; asked Vicky to point him out, but she never did. Pete went home and fought with Ash about some dumb thing and didn’t fall sleep. He was still up at six in the morning, when he got an email from Patrick. He was sorry; he wanted to go, but he didn’t really like that kind of thing, he got nervous about all the introductions and the PR chats and he liked it much better behind the scenes.

Pete didn’t write back. He had a plane to catch.

Before the whole craziness of the book tour and the signings and the interviews started up, he had decided to surprise Ashlee with a trip to Jamaica for their first wedding anniversary. Pete wanted to relax and eat and drink and have sex with his wife with the patio doors open and the ocean breeze blowing into their room. What he _didn’t_ want to do was think about his writing and his flake-out editor.

But then, dozing on a towel on a white sand beach on the Northern Coast, Ash at his side lazily flipping through fashion magazines, Pete had a crazily vivid dream in which he was walking [through a Van Gogh painting](http://art-vangogh.com/arles_95.html). He woke up with painted stars inside his eyelids and a head bursting with words.

He opened his eyes and realized he couldn’t wait to get home, write down everything he remembered, and send the whole sorry mess to Patrick, who would dissect his words and extract the meaning underneath and make sense of it all.

Who gave a fuck about dumb launch parties anyway.

*

They worked on his third novel for almost two years.

It was a sprawling machine of a book, made up of loose parts that Pete could hope to pull together only with Patrick’s help. Patrick pointed out themes and symbolisms where Pete saw only garbled attempts at self-centered expression; Patrick saw a shining web of signs and references in the dark chaos of Pete’s thoughts thrown on a page.

Throughout the writing process, Pete went back to his book of Van Gogh’s letters again and again; he underlined passages; copied them on post-it notes which he stuck on the wall behind his desk; typed them in emails which he sent to Patrick. _To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through a most powerful spell_. And, _Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all_. (It was Patrick who cut out three words from this quote and got the perfect title.)

_Without you I’m just me_, wrote Pete in the acknowledgments.

When _Infinity on High_ came out, the slightly lower sales were balanced by the glowing reviews. “A mature attempt at genre-bending”, they said, and, “an ambitious project in the footsteps of Calvino and Borges”, and (this was secretly Pete’s favorite), “a slightly unhinged, sprawling fantasy.” Ashlee begged off reading it, saying she just couldn’t concentrate on a 400-page tome during the crazy busy weeks that led up to fashion month and promising she would catch up during the holidays.

This time, he didn’t even hope to see Patrick at the launch party. After a few awkward silences and uncomfortably terse emails, he’d stopped asking to meet for coffee, or whether he would maybe see him at some event or other. Clearly, Patrick had either a serious case of social anxiety or a serious case of not wanting to meet him, specifically – which, yeah. Pete didn’t dwell too long on that, because he actually didn’t hate himself _that much_.

Patrick probably thought he had enough Pete Wentz in his life as it was. And maybe he wasn’t wrong – Pete’s track record with real-world relationships wasn’t that great, anyway. To wit, Ashlee couldn’t go to the launch either – she was already in London for fashion week. In the end, Pete asked Gabe to be his plus-one, and Gabe swooped in, dressed up in a purple suit with a clothespin clasped on the right pant leg and a bunch of white roses tied to the rear rack of his fixed-gear bike. He was loud and bright and flamboyant enough to distract Pete (and most of the guests), for which he was eternally grateful. The endless stream of champagne probably helped, too.

When Pete woke up the following morning, hungover as fuck, he found the following message, typed at 3 am and autosaved into his drafts:

> _im not sure i am thinking clearly but i just want you to know that i waited on your calls all night- they never came. i just wanted to say i miss you or im sorry or you know something that would have meant something to you. i would have made it poetic and memorable or at least something you could laugh at while drifting off to sleep. _

He pretended he was going to send that to his wife and ignored the “p” he had started to type in the recipient field before passing out, then he trashed the draft, took a bunch of Advil, drank a bunch of coffee, and started packing.

He had a dream when he finally fell asleep on the plane to LA, the first stop of the tour, still in the grip of a champagne headache. It was a dream featuring giant sequoias, a million Monarch butterflies, and Patrick – which was strange, because Pete didn’t know what Patrick looked like. But dream-logic conquers all, and here they were, walking around an enchanted forest.

_I believe in dreaming about you on airplanes_, he wrote in a new Moleskine he’d bought at the airport, and that set the tone for the rest of it. It would be a duet, a conversation. There would be an I and a You, and they would be perfectly matched, and sing back to each other.

The only problem was, the You was stubborn, and he didn’t want to talk – _he? They_, Pete corrected himself. In the book, the You wouldn’t be neither a he nor a she. Pete was fascinated by the idea of both characters being of indeterminate gender. If he could swing it, he would avoid clearing up any confusion. He didn’t want to clarify black or white. He was totally entranced with the idea of remaining grey. Anyway, the You kept an obstinate silence, and the I was stuck with Pete’s words and Pete’s thoughts. Pete still filled a notebook during the tour, thinking he’d get unstuck when he got back home and to his semi-healthy writing routine.

Of course, when he came home, he found a note on the kitchen table and empty spaces where Ashlee’s things had been. When he called her, he found out in short order that she had met someone new; that his name was Evan; that she was staying at his place; that she was sorry, but this was for the best, and she wasn’t going back on her decision.

* * *

Every year, Pete is taken aback by how hard February hits. He’s fine in October, happy for at least a week after Halloween, starts slowing down by November – he sleeps more, yet is always tired – makes it through December by sheer force of will because, he reasons, he can’t die before going home for the holidays (maybe later). He’s mostly okay for a bit, what with hugging his mom and his brother and sister and drinking eggnog with his dad and seeing old Chicago friends. He’s able to coast on the relative high of Christmas for a couple of weeks after he comes back to the city in mid January. And then February comes, white and dreary and cold as fuck and apparently _endless_, and he just crashes. Hard. And he’s always so _surprised_ at the crash. And he always feels like such a fucking _idiot_ for being surprised.

It’s a bit different this year – he’s alone for the first time in years, lacking even that bare minimum of a routine that came with living with another human being who slept and ate normally. At first it almost seems to help – he’s writing fast, excited to work on the new stories, content to live on cold pizza and five coffees and half a pack of cigarettes a day.

The first story is about mummies. He writes it in two days, leaves it alone for another two, then goes back, edits some stuff, and writes the ending. He titles it "Twin skeletons". (He doesn’t send it to Patrick yet because he doesn’t want to distract him from his deadline.)

On Tuesday, Gabe texts him telling him that the books Pete wanted have arrived. Pete can’t even think about getting out of the house when he’s this deep into writing mode, so he replies that he’ll go get them next week. It looks like he really needed a change of pace from the damn novel, because the next story is coming just as easily. This one is about a reluctant vampire.

On Thursday, just as he’s making the last revisions to the second story, his phone rings. This hasn’t happened in a while, because most of the people in Pete’s life have caught onto the fact that Pete doesn’t love talking on the phone (unless it’s Patrick. He likes talking to Patrick very much, and since they can’t do it in person, the phone is the next best thing).

It’s not Patrick’s name on the display of his phone, though. It’s Ashlee’s. Fuck.

“Hey, Ash. What’s up?”

“Hi, Pete. I’m downstairs, can I come up? I came to get the stuff.”

“Uhm. Sure, come on up.”

Ashlee has moved out of Pete’s place with the super efficiency he’s seen her apply to most of the things in her life, but a three-year marriage is still bound to leave a trace. There’s a small pile of mail with her name on it on the hall table, a box of out-of-season clothes and shoes under the bed, some vitamins Pete found at the back of a bathroom cabinet.

He waits for her in the kitchen, which seems marginally less weird than waiting for her in the bedroom. Even though she still has a key, obviously, which she just used to get in the building, she rings the doorbell – which, Pete thinks, might be her way of announcing she doesn’t live here anymore, or an attempt to show him she respects his privacy, or something. Considering he already had some trouble understanding some of Ashlee’s motivations while they were married, it’s no surprise that things haven’t improved since she left.

They’ve never really talked about the divorce. There has been no big fight, no angsty confrontation, no back-and-forth slinging of accusations. They would probably get some closure, but it all seems so pointless. She was very clear on the fact that she wasn’t going back on her decision, and Pete didn’t feel like begging her to reconsider, and maybe that was reason enough. When Pete allows himself to think about it, it’s pretty clear they’d been over for a long time. He’s almost grateful that he was spared the responsibility of making a decision.

Today’s no different. They make painful small talk while Pete helps her assemble the stuff she left behind. How is work? Work is good. How’s your family? They’re doing well. Are you writing? Yes, working on something new. That’s good. Yep. Did my lawyer call your lawyer? I think so. Then she says, “How’s Patrick?”

“Uhm, I don’t know. We haven’t talked in a few days.”

Ashlee looks at him incredulously. “You haven’t– I thought he would be here, honestly.”

“Here? Why would he–” Pete stops at the look on Ashlee’s face. It’s a look he’s never seen on her, an ugly mix of sadness and anger and pity. He can’t look away.

“Do you know how I knew I wouldn’t break your heart when I left?” she asks, faintly, and Pete wants to deny this, wants to tell her that of course she broke his heart, but he can’t. He just shakes his head. “Because you already were in love with someone else. You’ve been for years.”

“What? I don’t–” he says thickly.

Ashlee comes close; she kisses his cheek, lingering for a moment and leaving a thin trail of tears on his skin. “Bye, Pete,” she whispers, and then she turns away and he watches her go.

Pete walks numbly back to the bedroom and to his desk. He opens Mail, attaches the two finished stories to a new message and is suddenly too tired to type anything more than _here they are; take your time_. He sends the email to Patrick and shuts down his computer.

Then he strips and he gets into the shower, turning the handle until the water is hot enough to hurt. He can’t stop seeing that look on Ashlee’s face; he scrubs at his skin until he can’t smell her perfume and feel her tears smudged on his cheekbone anymore.

The thing about the divorce is that it he wasn’t really shocked. He wasn’t devastated. Not really, not deeply. Yes he feels sad – yes he misses Ashlee’s sweet brightness, their tiny everyday rituals – yes he feels pretty fucking lonely. Mostly, he feels like the disaster he’s always known he is. A human-shaped pile of issues who tried his hand at normalcy and failed spectacularly.

When he gets out of the shower, he realizes he’s exhausted, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. He dries off roughly and puts on some sweatpants that are not even really clean and curls up in bed.

There’s something stuck in his throat, like all the sadness he has pushed down and not allowed himself to feel is trying to crawl back out of his chest. He fucking hates crying, but if he doesn’t let it out the thing lodged in his throat is going to steal his breath. He knows from past experience that if he resists crying that knot will turn into a full-blown panic attack, so he gives in. He cries until there’s nothing left. Then he notices he’s shivering and pulls the covers up over his head for warmth. He kind of wants a drink; he kind of wants to use that drink to wash down a couple of Xanax. It would be so easy, he thinks, to go back to his old coping mechanisms, to self-medicating until his mind stops buzzing. Although – his old coping mechanisms are not conducive to a calm and concentrated mind; they’re going to make it harder to write, which Patrick isn’t going to be happy about.

And now that he’s thinking about Patrick, he kind of wants to hear his voice. Which might help more than his previous coping strategies. But he can’t call Patrick. He’s busy.

There’s an unpleasant pang in his stomach that is either hunger because he hasn’t eaten an actual meal in too fucking long, or jealousy. God, he’s such an asshole. He can’t expect Patrick to always be available, it’s not like he’s Pete’s own personal…editor, brainstorming partner, emotional support honey-voiced grammar genius whom he’s never met. It’s not like Patrick is his, he thinks, and he’s not sure where this haze of bitterness and yearning that is suddenly wrapped around him has come from.

Oh, fuck. Pete forgets how to breathe for a second as he realizes something with heartstopping clarity. Ashlee is right. He’s such an idiot.

_For fucking years_.

*

Pete hears the key turn in the lock and Gabe’s voice ringing out in the hallway. “Honey, I’m home!”

(On Pete’s first attempt at college, he’d quit two semesters short of graduating, during an especially bad depressive episode. That winter, the most brutal Chicago winter he could remember, he’d written _Take This To Your Grave_ on his old shitty Macbook with the E key that kept getting stuck, while freezing his ass off in an apartment with faulty heating. In a few months he’d gone from hand-making chapbooks at his friend Chris’ kitchen table, to publishing his debut with a local micro indie press, to selling movie tie-in rights for peanuts to some hipster movie director and, finally, to getting an email from an editor at Penguin enquiring about reissue rights for his first novel. And then there was a whirlwind of contracts with actual advances and readings and conferences and interviews, which made going back to college seem a bit pointless.

While his writer’s block over his second novel still seemed unlikely to ever end, he decided he might as well try again and get that useless English degree after all. On the very first day of class of college attempt number two, he met Gabe. They were both older than most of the other students, and didn’t see the appeal of the typical college experience. Which wasn’t to say they hadn’t gotten smashed together, they had – a lot. And they had lived together for almost two years, which allowed Gabe to see Pete both at his best and at his worst.

When Gabe eventually got his own place, they established a policy. Unless he gives Gabe a heads-up, Pete is supposed to swing by the bookstore every week, by Friday evening at the latest. Otherwise, Gabe swings by Pete’s place to check on him. They don’t do anything special – fresh books, stale coffee, and a catch-up. It’s a good way to keep in touch, though, and it’s never felt like an obligation. Pete knows it’s mostly Gabe being kind and a bit over-protective, but he doesn’t mind.)

If Gabe is here, Pete thinks, it must be Saturday afternoon, which means he lost a bit more than a day. He’s done worse in the past, but still.

“Too soon for the ‘honey I’m home’ joke?” asks Gabe, smiling softly from the bedroom door. Pete peeks an eye out of his blanket fort and shrugs. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Right. He hasn’t spoken for more than twenty-four hours. He clears his throat.

“‘s okay,” he rasps out.

“I brought you your books. Need a hug?” asks Gabe, who knows him way too well. Pete slips the rest of his head out of his cocoon and tries for a smile. The result must be horrible, but Gabe, undaunted, toes off his sneakers, comes to sit next to him on the bed, and wraps him in his arms.

“You smell good,” says Pete, nuzzling his chest.

“Wish I could say the same, man.”

Pete chuckles. “Yeah, yeah. Promise I’ll get in the shower if you order some food.”

“No need,” Gabe says. “I got us a shitton of buns from Momofuku.”

“OhmygodIloveyousomuch,” Pete mumbles, smushing his face harder into Gabe’s neon green shirt.

“I know. Go shower.” He squeezes Pete tighter, then moves back. “Then while we eat, we’ll talk.”

“Nothing to talk about,” Pete lies.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure.”

*

Freshly showered and wearing clean clothes and his favorite hoodie, Pete sits on the couch, stuffs himself full of steamed buns and absolutely does not look forward to the imminent conversation. Unlike him, Gabe stops eating after a normal amount of buns, then proceeds to look at him expectantly for a full minute of ominous silence. Pete reminds himself he’s always preferred the band-aid approach and blurts out with his mouth still full, “So I think I might be kind of in love with Patrick.”

Gabe’s face goes through a series of different expressions. He opens his mouth but seems unable to react with actual words to this crucial revelation.

“Will you please say something?” Pete asks, gesturing with the half-eaten bun in his hand.

This is when Gabe starts laughing explosively, hands clutching his face in hilarity and/or despair. Eventually he recovers enough to gasp out, “Oh god...” then he looks at the ceiling, taking a deep breath, and says, “You’re serious, right? You’re seriously telling me you didn’t know?”

Pete gapes, like an underrated goldfish, or any kind of fish really. Anyway, he’s speechless.

“Why?” he croaks out eventually. “Did _you_ know?”

Gabe has another fit. Pete waits it out.

“You knew! And you didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you tell me?” Pete wants to know.

Gabe visibly tries to sober up. “Dude, I thought you knew! I mean, I figured you were in denial a little bit, okay, but not–” he gestures with both his super long arms, encompassing all of Pete, “_–this much_.”

And honestly, Pete deserves it. “Okay, I get it, I’m the dumbest asshole who’s ever lived. But Gabe. I’ve never liked a guy. Let alone a guy I’ve never even met. I don’t even know what he looks like. Huh… I must be less shallow than I thought.”

“Right! Silver lining, see? Also, I’m sure he’s hot.”

“Well, we don’t know that, and anyway I don’t care. Because I don’t care about looks. Apparently. Or the fact that he has a dick. I don’t even care about that anymore.” Pete has always cared about looks, both his own and other people’s. A lot. Especially if the other people were people he wanted to fuck. “Oh god. Do I want to fuck Patrick?”

“Of course you do. And you totally should. I mean, his taste in books alone…” Gabe says, with a dreamy look in his eyes.

“Hey, eyes up here, mister,” says Pete, snapping his fingers. “Please don’t fetishize my editor’s literary taste.”

Gabe snickers. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’m sure he’s hot,” he says again, and it might be weird, the way he said that twice, only Pete is pretty sure that Patrick’s hot, too. He just has this feeling.

* * *

When Patrick regains consciousness on Sunday afternoon his mouth feels so dry that he can kind of sympathize with the mummies from Pete’s story, the printout of which is incidentally covering half his face. He must have fallen asleep while he was still reading, and as usual he’s risked squashing his glasses, which look up at him judgingly from his pillow. As curious as he is about the mummies’ fate, he really needs some water. And coffee. So much coffee. He moves the stapled pages aside and crawls out of bed. It’s a small miracle that he got as far as he did reading before he passed out, exhausted as he was. But then, he’s never been able to wait too long when Pete sends him new material.

While the coffee is brewing, he splashes his face with cold water and retrieves the story. He reads it through the end while sipping on his first cup of the day. The mummies awaken just as oxygen tears through their tombs and disintegrates everything that has surrounded them for thousands of years. While everything around them breaks down, they crawl inside the last sarcophagus still standing; they’re terrified, and one of them tries to distract the other with recollections of their life together. The memories slowly crumble as their bandages and flesh decay and pulverize, until they can’t remember their names anymore, and fall asleep for the rest of eternity, pressed close, after calling each other _Meri_, beloved, one last time. Finally, the archeologists who opened up the tomb arrive to find only two embracing skeletons.

“Good morning, sunshine!” says Andy’s voice through the fog.

Patrick shakes his head and rubs under his eyes. They’re wet.

“Fuck, Patrick, are you crying? What happened?” Andy sits down and looks at him in concern.

“Nothing, just– This stupid story.” Patrick shakes his head and drinks some more coffee, which is still hot, luckily. Fucking mummies.

“Pete?” asks Andy, like he already knows the answer.

“Yeah,” Patrick replies anyway. “It’s just. I wasn’t expecting all these fucking feelings first thing in the morning.”

“Dude, it’s four in the afternoon,” says Andy, who’s probably already been out for a nice long run and cooked two healthy and nutritious meals. Well, Patrick knows for sure that _Andy_ didn’t stay up until five a.m. to finish proofreading a truly awful 800-page political memoir. Also Patrick hopes there are leftovers.

*

Full of delicious vegan tabbouleh and vegan blueberry muffins and more coffee, Patrick feels ready to deal with the emo mummies again – this time with a healthy dose of detachment and his professional pants on. As well as an actual pair of pants, because as much as he loves working from home and avoiding unnecessary interactions with other human beings – and he loves it _a lot_ – he still draws the line at working in his underwear. The pants rule is especially important in this case, when he has so much trouble separating the personal from the professional already. Most other rules go right out the window, with Pete. Case in point: he does not make a habit of weeping over manuscripts. Other case in point: that first reading, purely for pleasure, is something he never allows himself with other things he’s working on; he doesn’t have the time nor, mostly, the inclination. But Pete’s writing is the one exception.

Working on that interminable political memoir has been a kind of reprieve from all of this; Pete’s constant presence in his life is a good thing most of the time, but sometimes Patrick needs a break. He shot Pete a quick email warning him that he wouldn’t be able to look at his new stories until after the weekend, but he’s prepared to find a bunch of messages from him when he opens Mail – usually, Pete keeps the conversation going even when he knows Patrick can’t reply until later. Instead, there is one lone message, from the night before at two a.m.

> _From: Pete _  
_To: me _  
** _Subject: her body and other parties _ **
> 
> _this book is amazing. wish i could write a story like [the husband stitch](https://granta.com/the-husband-stitch/)_
> 
> _ps- “when she laughed on the other end of the line, something inside of me cracked open, and I let her step inside” _

So Pete is reading the books Patrick recommended, which is great... However, it’s never a good sign when he starts comparing himself unfavorably to other authors. Combined with the fact that Patrick hasn’t received twenty-eight emails about this new project, random tv shows, and some kind of junk food, he feels some concern. (He doesn’t even start to wonder about the meaning of the _post scriptum_.)

He briefly considers calling, but if Pete is going through one of his episodes there’s not much he can do over the phone; the last time it happened, hearing his voice sound like someone else’s, low and gravelly and defeated, it was all Patrick could do not to ask him for his address and get on a taxi. He’s not sure he could do that again.

The most helpful thing he can do is probably getting to work and returning the story with his comments as soon as possible. Pete always feels better when he’s busy.

*

> _From: me _  
_To: Pete _  
** _Subject: Re:twin skeletons _ **
> 
> _Hey. Sorry for disappearing. I had a very long, very boring job with an absurd deadline, but I’m done now and I’m all yours. _
> 
> _I really liked this story a lot. Added some comments, but it’s minor stuff. Oh, there is one thing – I did a quick search and it looks like Meri, the nickname they use, is the male form. You probably want to change one to the female form, which is Merit. _
> 
> _P. _
> 
> _P.S. Glad you liked ‘Her Body and Other Parties’._

After that, Patrick does a criminally quick clean of his room, which has become the usual hell pit while he was on a deadline. Then he opens the second story. It’s about vampires, of course. Well, best get it over with.

> _**My next piercing is going to be a stake through the heart** _
> 
> _You ever try being a suicidal vampire? Trust me, it’s hard. I know what you’re thinking – if I really wanted to off myself I could just take a walk into the sunlight. Tomorrow morning, even. Just set my alarm nice and early, crawl out of my coffin, and done. But it’s not that easy, you see. I should know – I tried. The demon living in my blood has a fucking strong survival instict. What do you know anyway? You’re human. _

Patrick realizes he picked up his phone and called Pete when he hears his voice saying “Hello?” in his ear. It sounds muffled, far away.

“Areyouokay?” he breathes out.

“Yeah, yeah. What’s wrong?” Pete sounds a bit off, but coherent. Patrick tries to breathe.

“_What’s wrong?_” Patrick slides a hand through his hair, doubtlessly fucking it up beyond any hope. Fuck’s sake. “I just started your vampire story. You know, the one where the guy wants to _kill himself._”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. So to reiterate my first question, _are you fucking okay_?” Patrick can hear the pleading in his own voice and he wishes he could be calmer about this, but he can’t. He is one of the four people on the planet who know about the night Pete swallowed a bottle of pills. The silence stretches on and he can hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. “Pete, please talk to me.”

“Trick, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about it, I swear,” Pete says finally. “It was just– you didn’t get to the end yet, did you?”

“No, I. Honestly, I fucking panicked and called you.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. It’s just a gimmick, I promise, you’ll see it when you read on, because eventually he finds out that he can, like, burn out the demon by going into the sun and he goes back to being human.”

“Oh. Well. Guess I should have read to the end before freaking out.”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry for making you worry. Seriously, dude, I’ll admit my mood was pretty low for a few days but nothing like that. Nothing like that, I promise. Listen, if you don’t like this story, we can take it out. I don’t care. It’s not even one of my favorites. Really. Just skip it.”

“What? I can’t just _skip_ a story you wrote,” says Patrick, outraged.

“Why not? I’ll write a new one tomorrow. One hundred percent vamp-free. No one dies. It’s going to be about a unicorn with tiny bells on his tail who eats, uhm… rainbow sprinkles, and–”

“And he goes on adventures, right? With all his unicorn friends?” Patrick asks.

“Obviously. But nothing bad ever happens,” says Pete.

“That sounds so awful,” says Patrick. “Please never write a children’s book.”

“Okay, promise,” says Pete, laughing.

Patrick allows himself to picture what it would be like if they were in the same room. They would be sitting close to each other, and he would look for the pulse in the hollow of Pete’s throat, watch it slow down until their heartbeats matched. As it is, he listens to Pete breathe softly on the line a bit too long, and eventually he asks, “So how many stories were you thinking?”

“Thirteen.”

“Okay. What’s the next one about? Any trigger warnings?”

“Nah, you’re safe. Next one’s just a bit sad. I’m still working on it, though.”

“Oh wow, Pete Wentz wrote something sad, I am _shocked_,” says Patrick in his best deadpan voice.

“God, that’s so funny, Patrick. Just for this I’m gonna write you the unicorn story, and make him shit pixie dust, see if I don’t.”

“Yeah yeah, and he’s gonna have daddy issues and cry himself to sleep into his fluffy rainbow mane.”

“Probably,” says Pete, sadly, but Patrick can hear the smile in his voice.

“Talk later?”

“Sure. Later, Trick.”

*

There is a list pinned up in a place of honor in Patrick’s brain, printed in big red block capitals and titled: Reasons Why I Should Never Ever Meet Pete Wentz Face to Face.

For a long time, if you had asked him about it, Patrick would have said he would have really, _really_ liked to meet Pete Wentz. He had _feelings_ about the whole thing, you see – Pete was a highly hyped first-time author and Patrick was a book geek in his late teens with a big stupid crush. It was a brain-crush at first, born out of Pete’s clever prose in his first novel, of the brilliant and slightly twisted way he had managed to turn a traditional coming-of-age novel on its head; quite soon, however (basically as soon as Patrick had turned the book over and saw Pete’s huge dark eyes and the tattoos peeking out over the stretched out v-neck of his shirt), it became a dick-crush as well.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when a writer is at least marginally attractive, their publisher will slap a full-page picture on the back cover, and every publication printing a review or an interview will ask for more pictures – and Pete was way more than marginally attractive, thus leaving no dearth of material for Patrick’s self-gratification. Which he doesn’t feel guilty about. He was eighteen, for fuck’s sake.

Years later, when in an incredible stroke of luck he became Pete’s trusted editor, it wasn’t that difficult to squash the dick-feelings. He wasn’t a starstruck teenager anymore, and Pete was married and straight. They were collaborators and quickly became friends and it was amazing; it was definitely more than enough.

Still, when the launch party for _Cork Tree_ rolled around, the idea of actually meeting him filled Patrick’s stomach with butterflies and, immediately after, reduced him to a miserable ball of anxiety. He spent the night curled up in bed, unable to sleep, waiting for a text or a call that never came. In the morning he managed to send Pete an email containing a fakely nonchalant apology and finally passed out.

He didn’t hear back for a month.

It was _not_ a good month for Patrick. Slightly depressed, going out even less than usual, and editing a mind-numbingly boring self-help manual for middle-aged divorcees who wanted to start over, he’d realized two things: first, his crush on Pete was still going strong, and second, meeting him in person would be a really bad idea.

Because Pete was straight. And married. And they were friends. Also Pete was way out of his league anyway. And these were the four pillars of Patrick’s list of Reasons Why He Should Never Ever Meet Pete Wentz.

*

> _**Frankenstein is the guy** _
> 
> _It seemed funny at the time. I was on the phone with Martin, saying, “Man, this fucking marriage is like a fucking zombie or, or like Frankenstein or something.” _
> 
> _“You know Frankenstein is the guy, though,” Martin said, distracted. _
> 
> _“What guy?” _
> 
> _“The guy, you know, the doctor or whatever, the one who makes the monster. Not the monster.” _
> 
> _“Oh. Right.” _
> 
> _But later, when I thought about it, it felt so shitty. Why did Martin never tell me Frankenstein was the guy? I must have made an idiot of myself so many times… while he’d always known. He should have told me. And maybe there was other stuff he wasn’t telling me. That he would never tell me. _
> 
> _That is how it started. _

Pete warned him about the sadness; what Patrick didn’t expect was this story being so fucking terrifying. It’s maybe due to feeling so _real_; the main character talks like Pete – a distorted version of him, who stitches a monster made up of his worst emotions, thinking of revenge on his cheating wife, on his best friend, guilty of not being supportive enough. Then, of course, the monster turns on its maker – it kills him, takes his place, and no one notices the difference.

It’s a good story, though, and again Patrick makes only minor suggestions and sends it back.

“Obviously this has nothing to do with your divorce,” he tells Pete later, during their nightly phone call.

“Obviously.”

“However, just to be on the safe side, I think you should show this story to your therapist.”

“Okay,” Pete says. “I will.”

“What? No objection? No resistance?” asks Patrick, surprised.

“Why should I ever resist you?” Pete says, because as Patrick knows very well by now, Pete has a flirty personality. It doesn’t mean anything, of course. Patrick blushes furiously anyway, and changes the subject. This, he reminds himself, is exactly why there is a List – so that he doesn’t make an idiot out of himself in front of Pete, blushing like a teenager who meets his favorite rock star, or something appalling like that.

*

Working on short stories is different than working on a novel. They build up a rhythm and soon they’re back to exchanging fifteen, twenty emails a day, going back and forth with ideas and comments and suggestions, then talking for a while on the phone every night.

Of course, in theory, this is Patrick’s job, but he knows the way they work goes well beyond a normal working relationship between an author and their editor, and at this point, it is so much more than a job to him. (He wouldn’t admit this under torture, but he would honestly do it for free.) When it gets too intense, as it can at times, and Patrick starts feeling overwhelmed, it’s usually time for him to take a break anyway and work on something else. They’ve been more or less constantly working on various projects since _Cork Tree_, and that month of silence after the launch is still the longest time they have gone without talking.

When Pete told him about this new idea, it was clear he was looking for a distraction, something silly and weightless that wouldn’t make him think, but as is often the case with him, the original plan backfired and here are these stories that are so completely and typically Pete’s – a core of white-hot emotion concealed by layers of dark irony and tongue-in-cheek pop culture references and clever wordplay until it becomes impossible to decode what is underneath. Or, as Pete told him one night, tipsy and just before passing out while still on the phone, _until there is one single pair of eyes that could ever decode any of it_.

*

They’ve been working on _Black_ for a few months now; it’s late at night and Patrick is spread out on his bed, phone next to his head on the pillow and Pete on speaker because his arm was getting tired. They’ve been talking for a long time, about other people’s books and music and god knows what else, when Patrick remembers something and says, “Oh, you never got back to me about changing one of the mummies’ nicknames in Twin Skeletons.”

“Oh, I didn’t?” says Pete, lightly. “Slipped my mind. Anyway, there’s no need to change it, ‘cause they’re both dudes.”

For a second Patrick’s body forgets it is lying on a mattress resting on a bed frame standing on a very solid floor and Patrick feels like he’s freefalling from a great height. “Say again?” he squawks.

“They’re… both dudes? Like, they’re gay. Why, is that weird?”

“No, no, of course not, why would it be weird?” asks Patrick, profoundly weirded out. Does this make him a hypocrite? _He'_s gay, so why can’t the mummies? What’s the big deal here? He needs to think about this. Or maybe he needs to _not_ think about this – in any case, his hands are shaking and his head feels like a helium balloon, so he says, “Uhm, sorry, I need to go do a thing, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?” and proceeds to hang up on Pete.

If he thinks about it now, he’s going to freak himself out and not be able to sleep. So he carefully doesn’t think about it while he brushes his teeth and carefully doesn’t think about it as he goes to bed and turns off the light.

*

So there’s a List, and it’s pretty fucking important to Patrick, but it’s growing shorter by the day. First, Pete went and got divorced. And now he’s writing about gay mummies. Which is fine. It’s great. Patrick is all for LGBTQA+ mummy representation in fiction.

It is morning, and Patrick is standing at the kitchen sink and staring, stupefied, at the dishes he was supposed to wash in order to distract himself from the gay mummies.

It’s just. It’s like.

“So I need your opinion on something. Theoretically–” Patrick says to Andy, who just came into the kitchen. “_Theoretically_, do you think someone who is straight would write a story about gay mummies? I mean, there’s nothing saying they couldn’t, but like. Would they? I mean, _generally speaking_?”

Andy shuffles over, snakes his arm around Patrick’s unmoving form to turn off the faucet, and lets out a sigh so deep and weary that Patrick wonders if maybe he should have continued his gay mummy freak-out in the privacy of the inside of his own head.

“Patrick,” Andy begins, in that tone that reminds Patrick of his grandma on the Catholic side of the family and fills him suddenly with guilt. He looks up at Andy, who says, “I’m going to tell you something now and you’re not gonna like it.”

“Okay,” says Patrick, holding onto the edge of the sink for dear life.

“You are in over your head and you’re not seeing things clearly. It doesn’t even matter if Pete is straight or bi or–”

“I wasn’t–”

“Please don’t tell me you weren’t talking about Pete, I’m not an idiot. Fucking _listen_ to me.” Patrick recoils, mostly because it’s so rare to see Andy lose his cool. “_Shit_, I’m sorry,” Andy says, bringing up his hands. “I just– let’s start over.”

“Sure. Okay.” Patrick dries his hands off on a towel and plops down in a chair.

Andy sits next to him and says, “I’ve been watching this thing unfold and you know I try not to be the kind of guy who tells you how to live your life but… Patrick, you’re my friend and I love you and you haven’t had a relationship in years because you’re too wrapped up in him. He was married, I get it…”

“But–” says Patrick. Andy raises his palm – _hold it_ – and goes on.

“I think that you can’t go on like this, and honestly, by now you don’t even need to. I know you have a whole list of dumb reasons why you shouldn’t meet him, but...”

“They’re dumb?” Patrick surmises.

“Yeah. He’s not married anymore, he’s never been that straight, and you really need to stop it with this star-crossed shit.”

“Well, fuck,” Patrick says. That whole speech was extremely unsettling. He’s unsettled, maybe even in shock a bit, because he starts laughing and he can’t stop. He laughs until there are tears in his eyes and hopes for something, anything, to make sense again. Faced with this clearly hysterical reaction, Andy chooses to hug him, and because Andy gives great hugs, Patrick is able to calm down enough to mumble into his shoulder, “Not that straight, huh?”

Andy pushes Patrick back gently and holds him at arms’ length and asks him, earnestly, “Did you fucking read his fucking books?”

“But, but, there’s always a girl,” he reasons.

“There is indeed always a girl. But, here’s the funny thing. Did you notice how, since you two have known each other, there is also always a best friend who’s a guy and is so good and talented and perfect? What was it that he wrote in the acknowledgments again?”

Patrick duly recites both of the phrases Pete wrote for him in the acknowledgments of his novels. Andy stares at him, somehow managing to convey that, a) those are significant things to write to someone in the acknowledgments of your novel, and b) it is also significant that Patrick knows them word for word. This double layer of significance is not lost on Patrick.

“We have a... peculiar work relationship,” Patrick argues. “We just _get_ each other. He says I’m his best friend.”

“Of course. And I’m sure he means it. You’re _my_ best friend too, the difference being that _I_ don’t want to bone you. No offense.”

“None taken.” Patrick breathes. He would say he needs to think about it, only he doesn’t, not really: Andy is completely right, he’s being a coward and he needs to get over his hang-ups. “Okay. You’re probably right. I mean, I’m still not at all convinced that he’s not straight. But I should… find out. Talk to him, or something.”

“Man, you do nothing but talk to him, all day every day. Please, for the love of fuck, ask the guy out for coffee and see what happens.”

“What do you think is gonna happen?” asks Patrick. He genuinely has no idea.

“I don’t know, but I can tell you right now that I don’t want to know the details.”

*

Patrick is dozing – recuperating from the long night he spent not thinking about gay mummies – when his phone buzzes twice. He snatches it up before in can vibrate itself down the bedside table. It’s Pete, of course.

> _why is editing a better job than writing? _  
_because its more rewording _
> 
> _Would you like to go get coffee next week? _
> 
> _lol _  
_wait what? _  
_for real? _
> 
> _Yes, for real. _  
_Would you? _
> 
> _yes _  
_fuck yes _  
_all this time and all i needed to do was tell u a really terrible joke? _  
_damn _

*

Hot Mess Books is one of Patrick’s favorite places; he’s there most weeks to take a look at the new releases and browse through the excellent sci-fi section. They have new and used books; they serve decent coffee and the owner is a hot hipster guy who always seems happy to chat with Patrick and lightly flirt with him while he rings him up, which doesn’t hurt. So that’s the place he suggests when Pete asks him where he wants to meet; it feels like a safe, neutral space, and it’s far enough from home that Patrick won’t be tempted to invite Pete up to his place and do something he’d regret. (He’s been having some trouble remembering why he would regret doing that kind of something, which makes this part particularly important.)

Patrick gets there early, and by the time five o’clock rolls around, he’s practically worked himself into a panic attack. He tries to sit at one of the small round tables near the back of the store but he feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin with nerves, so he gets up again and goes back to browsing the aisles. He hears the bell over the door ring a few times but he can’t find the courage to turn around and look. He hides behind the books – which is ironic, because it’s just what he’s always done, only he does it literally this time.

By five past, Patrick is spiralling so completely that he’s considering trying to slip away unnoticed, without even checking if Pete is actually here. His plan is thwarted by someone coming up behind him. It’s Hot Hipster Guy.

“Hey, Patrick,” he says (surprisingly – Patrick didn’t know Hot Hipster Guy knew his name.) “So this thing came in, and I think you’ll love it, let me show you.”

And then he actually takes Patrick by the hand and drags him to the back of the store, where Pete is sitting at one of the small tables, looking pale and just as freaked out as Patrick.

“I think this is yours,” says Gabe, depositing Patrick in the other chair, and takes off.

“What the fuck,” says Patrick to no one in particular. Pete is looking at him with huge eyes. Patrick’s face feels like it’s actually on fire.

“So that was Gabe,” Pete says, not taking his eyes off him. “Please forgive him. Apparently you’ve been coming to his store for ages and he figured out you were my Patrick a few months ago and he’s never said anything until now.”

“Oh,” says Patrick, looking down at his hands folded in his lap while he tries to process… all of that. Somehow, his brain has gotten stuck on _my Patrick_. “Okay.”

“So…” Pete starts saying at the same time as Patrick says, “Listen…”

_Listen, this is a bad idea_, is what Patrick was going to say, but then he looks up and Pete is smiling at him, and Patrick feels immediately so much calmer. Maybe this is indeed a bad idea, but Patrick can’t bring himself to be the guy who wipes off that smile off Pete’s face, so he smiles back, and says, “Tell me another writer joke.”

“Uhm…” Pete scrunches up his face in thought. “Oh, I’ve got one! What do writers have for breakfast?”

“What?” asks Patrick, obediently.

“Synonym buns.”

Patrick cracks up laughing – not at the joke, the joke is so awful, it’s worse than the first one, where the fuck does Pete get these horrible jokes, and how many does he have just stored in his brain like that, Patrick never wants to find out except for the fact that he desperately wants to find out because he wants to find out every fucking thing he doesn’t know about Pete yet. He laughs because the tension broke and he was a nervous wreck and he needs to get that energy out somehow, and he probably looks more than a little crazy. But Pete doesn’t look at him like he’s crazy – he just watches him, half-smiling, with those incredible eyes, which Patrick has thought about too many times to count, which look even more incredible in person, shining like polished amber, like tiger’s eye, and he says, in a tone close to wonder, “Patrick.”

Patrick figures he should go for broke and takes one of Pete’s hands in his. Pete doesn’t say anything, but his smile gets bigger. Patrick’s fear was that physical attraction would get in the way of their friendship, but the reality is so much worse, better, _bigger_ than that. He saw Pete as two separate people before, kind of – the stranger he had a crush on before knowing him, and the friend he actually got to know, even though only through phone calls and texts and emails. But there is no stranger in front of him, only the same guy Patrick knows almost better than himself – and, coincidentally, he’s one of the most beautiful human beings Patrick has ever seen. He is so utterly _fucked_.

After that, they talk easily for a couple of hours, about anything and everything. It’s just like one of the rambling phone calls that feel like home to Patrick – the only difference being that Pete is trying to find all the ways to make him blush, and Patrick can’t stop looking into those eyes, trying to induce that smile, and their knees are pressed together under the table. There is a multitude of light glancing touches, fingers on hands and shoulders and pushing back hair and fixing collars, like their hands have a mind of their own and have decided they absolutely can’t stay away for longer than a minute.

Patrick feels like he’s flying – so happy and so fucking scared all at once.

Later, Pete says, “I’m pretty messed up right now, Trick. If you like me like this, we’re golden.”

_I love you like this_, is what comes to mind, but Patrick bites it down and says instead, “Then we’re fucking golden.”

Later still, they’re outside on the street; it’s dark by now, raining lightly, and they’re standing under the streetlight in front of the bookstore, Gabe watching them not even a little stealthily through the window. They’re supposed to be saying goodbye when Pete steps close and says, “I hope it’s okay, but uhm, I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

Patrick would like to ask a couple of questions, for example: has Pete ever kissed a guy? Would it be the first time he kisses someone else after his ex-wife? Does he have any idea how many times Patrick has fantasized about this? Isn’t he terrified of fucking everything up, too? Before he’s done ranking his questions in order of priority, he sees Pete taking half a step back. Patrick gave him the impression he doesn’t want to be kissed, which is the wrong impression, because he really, really does.

“C’mere,” he says, and Pete’s face lights up again and a moment later he’s standing so close that Patrick only has to tilt his head up to touch his lips to Pete’s, and yeah. They’re kissing, just a brush of lips, but the feeling punches Patrick’s breath out of him, he feels hot all over with it, Pete’s taste on his lips and his fingers curling behind his ear to pull him close. Patrick shivers and slides his arms around Pete’s waist inside his jacket, breaking the kiss to catch his breath and nuzzling Pete’s neck where he smells like smoke and leather and cedar and sandalwood. Pete sighs and kisses him again, Patrick’s mouth opening inevitably as the kiss deepens.

So this is how this particular Friday afternoon ends for Patrick: making out with Pete Wentz against a streetlight under the rain in front of one of his favorite bookstores in Williamsburg. Cold raindrops are dripping down his neck, his glasses are foggy, and he wants to scream a little bit, maybe write a letter to his past self. What he definitely needs to do, he thinks, is buy Andy a thank-you dinner at a pretentious vegan restaurant of his choice.

*

They need to talk, Patrick thinks once he’s back home, warmed up from a hot shower and still floating on the high of the most incredible make-out session in the history of the human race. _We need to talk_, he texts Pete. Then he sees how that could sound ominous and he texts again, _Not like that, please don’t freak out_.

Unsurprisingly, Pete calls him. Patrick knows all his voices, has catalogued and tagged them as symptoms of Pete’s mood; he expects his tired-but-too-wired-to-sleep voice, which is lower and rougher than when he’s working, focused, excited, anxious. Instead, he gets the fond, wondering tone with which Pete said his name earlier.

“Hey, Trick,” Pete says, and the difference is, now Patrick knows just how warm Pete’s eyes are in person, the way his lips curl in a barely-there smile when his voice turns just a bit teasing as he says, “What did you want to talk about?” Patrick has felt hot on his skin the helpless puff of breathy laughter he can hear now as Pete says, without waiting for a reply, “Fuck, I really want to see you again, when can I see you again.”

Everything has changed, which is exactly what Patrick was afraid would happen, and yet he can’t bring himself to care. Still, they don’t have phone sex – definitely not for lack of trying on Pete’s part, but Patrick really wants to see his face when he gets him off for the first time. Also, even though he was clearly wrong about Pete being straight, he still gets the feeling this is a recent development for him, and the last thing he wants is to rush things too much and trigger a full-blown sexual identity crisis.

“Let’s take it slow,” he tells Pete, and Pete agrees in the same aggrieved way he gets when Patrick deletes one or ten of his precious commas. “We still have to work on the last stories, anyway,” Patrick says. “Let’s go on a date to celebrate when we’re done.”

“I don’t know, Trick. It might be too long. I might die.”

“Of what?”

“Of... like, of not kissing you again.”

“Okay, you’re not as smooth as you think you are. Get some sleep.”

That night he dreams of Pete naked under him, hands twisted in the sheets, gasping as Patrick takes him apart with lips and fingers until he’s breathless and begging _please please please Patrick please_ and Patrick brings him off thrashing and screaming with a curl of his tongue and a vicious twist of his fingers. It feels so real that when he wakes up he feels like Pete has been physically wrenched away from him; he’s also more turned on than he can ever remember being. He licks his palm and reaches down to touch himself and comes embarrassingly fast, gasping Pete’s name, so hard he feels it like a punch to the gut. He lies there in a daze, breathing through the aftershocks, shivering and covered in goosebumps, until the rush of his blood in his ears quiets down. He thinks wildly of texting Pete, _I just dreamed of you in my bed and then had the most intense orgasm of my life_. Which wouldn’t be exactly consistent with the whole “taking it slow” concept, so he turns off his phone, just to be on the safe side, and goes to wash off the mess in the shower.

Once he’s cleaned up and his head feels mostly clear, he boots up his Mac and finds an email from Pete, sent at five a.m., with a new story. Of course he would stay up all night writing, Patrick thinks. Of fucking course.

* * *

> _**Your naked magic** _
> 
> _Once upon a time, you were not real. You were the melody ringing through my memories, the lone golden thread in my soul, the voice making sense of my words, life breathed into my shadow. With this spell, cast with instructions whispered in my ear, I dreamt you alive. My moods, wild and volatile, lie at the source of my magic, changing with the moon and tide and seasons and with the rhythm of day and night, giving me the chance to make you real and make you mine. With this spell I make you think of me the same way I think of you. With this spell I have you know me completely. With this spell I take you like sunshine on my skin, like sunset in my veins, I become the last thing you think of at nighttime. Why would I want my moods to be stabilized? _

This project was supposed to be a distraction. A novel is lifelike, whereas pop-culture-infused horror short stories have nothing to do with the mess that is his life and that’s good. That’s the point. So Pete was kind of surprised when he found out that the Frankenstein guy was getting divorced; when the ghost story was about a dead estranged husband haunting his wife’s new house; when the mummies turned out to be gay.

And then he met Patrick.

He met Patrick, and he wrote about a witch with bipolar dreaming herself the perfect partner. If pressed, he would say what he was trying to convey is that, if he could talk to God, the first thing he would ask her/him/them would be not to touch a hair on Patrick’s head. Like in that Nick Cave song. He sends Patrick [a link to the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnHoqHscTKE) and then he calls Gabe, who says _hello_ and asks _how are you_ like this is just an ordinary phone call after an ordinary night.

“I am... perplexingly optimistic,” Pete replies. “Kinda want to kill you, though.”

“I know, sorry. I meant to tell you, I did, but–”

“Yeah, I know. It’s okay. At least I know why you were so sure he would be hot.”

“So, what’s up?”

“Dude, you saw what’s up, you were ogling at us through the window!”

“I have never _ogled_ at anyone in my life,” says Gabe. “I was just, uhm. I seriously couldn’t look away! You were kissing epically under the rain, it was like that fucking scene in The Notebook!”

“Yeah,” Pete says, and blushes, and then thinks about Patrick blushing and gets a bit lost until Gabe makes a questioning noise. “Uhm, after _that_, we went home.” Gabe actually whistles. Pete despairs of his choice in friends. “We went to our _respective_ homes,” he clarifies. “We are Taking It Slow.”

“Which was Patrick’s idea, I’m guessing?”

“Obviously, yes.”

“Dude, taking it slow sounds good. You weren’t even attracted to guys until last week,” Gabe reminds him.

“Not true. I was very much attracted to… well, at least one guy. I just didn’t know it yet.”

“That doesn’t count. You kinda need to know it for it to count.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Don’t you need to go do your job or something?”

“I do, actually, but don’t think I’m done with you. Seriously, if you want to talk it out…”

“I’ll call you, promise.”

*

Pete had a nightmare once where he was awarded the [Bad Sex in Fiction Award](https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award) in a public ceremony. His parents were there, along with every girl he’d ever had sex with, as well as some of his favorite teachers from different stages of his education. He sincerely hopes it will never come to that, but the risk is there, since writing about sex is one of Pete’s trademarks; there are sex scenes in every one of his novels. So it’s not that surprising when he finds himself writing one in the second vampire story.

Vampires are a metaphor for sex, of course, and he wishes he were making a point about heteronormativity or something, but the truth is, when the teetotaler vampire waxes poetic about the milk-pale throat and the intoxicating scent of the human boy who’s making him seriously consider breaking his vow of abstinence, Pete is totally thinking about Patrick. He thinks about Patrick every minute he’s awake, dreams of him every night, aches for him while they talk on the phone. He’s going out of his mind and this taking-it-slow thing is not working out. Pete would like to vote for a different approach, for example the _exact opposite_ approach: taking it as fast and recklessly as possible, without looking back. He doesn’t think Patrick would take this proposal well, though, so he pours all his sexual frustration into the vampire story and he emails it and then goes for a run.

When he gets back he finds a missed call from Patrick.

“So that was not playing fair,” he says when Pete calls him back.

“What are you talking about?”

“The fucking vampires, Pete. And don’t try to tell me you didn’t do it on purpose. They even look like us for fuck’s sake. Do you have a biting kink or something?”

“Uhm.”

“Of course you do. Listen. I want to hate you because you got me all hot and bothered via vampires, and it was a place I swore I’d never go, but…”

“You love it.”

“I really, really don’t. Fucking vampires. Come on, get that last story finished and you can take me on that date.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean... I realize I might have given you the impression that I don’t think about it. That I don’t think about you. But Pete? I do. All the time.” Patrick’s voice goes low and the way he says his name does a number on Pete’s higher brain function. He’s having trouble breathing, is the thing, and that’s why after this declaration he is only able to rasp out, “Fuck.”

Which is just as well, because Patrick is apparently still against phone sex.

*

Pete has the time of his life writing the last story for the collection. It’s really ridiculous, so it’s obviously one of his favorites. The main character is an oblivious werewolf – in this world, werewolves start transforming only as adults and after they meet their mate, so when he turns, he knows he’s met them but he doesn’t know who they are. It takes him a long time to realize that it’s been his best friend the whole time, at which point they have hot possessive werewolf sex and live happily ever after.

He texts Patrick, _just a heads up, the werewolves are gay too_

> _Oh really? _  
_Should have guessed from all the gay sex. _
> 
> _did i get it right? _  
_cuz i dont have a lot of first hand experience _
> 
> _You got it right. _  
_Well apart from the werewolf stuff, I wouldn’t know about that. _
> 
> _i read a fuckton of very explicit fanfiction for that _  
_u know for research _
> 
> _Of course. For science. _
> 
> _like there are some things that shouldnt be hot _  
_and yet _
> 
> _Such as? _

Pete sends him a link to [his favorite werewolf fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4556922). An hour later, Patrick texts, _Fuck you_.

_thats the idea, yes_, Pete texts back.

Patrick sends him his address.

*

“What happened to taking it slow?” Pete asks as Patrick shoves him against the back of the door.

“Do you want me to stop,” says Patrick, looking at him, pupils blown wide in his blue-green eyes. Pete can only stare back, unable to find even a single word. He shakes his head. He never wants Patrick to stop, he never wants to stop seeing Patrick _wanting him_ like this.

“Then fuck slow,” says Patrick with feeling, and kisses him, and he’s not fucking around – it’s a kiss like an explosion, like an atom bomb. Pete gives up breathing as a lost cause and clutches at Patrick’s shoulders and just hangs the fuck on. Patrick slides one thigh between Pete’s legs, one hand pressed on his heart and the other curled into the waistband of his jeans. Pete buries his face into Patrick’s shoulder and gasps for air while Patrick proceeds to take him completely apart without even getting him out of his clothes.

“This is all on you, you know” says Patrick, about ten minutes later. Ten is maybe a bit generous – more like seven to eight breathless, world-rocking minutes. They are sitting on the floor with their backs against the wall, their sides touching, skin sweaty, clothes rumpled, hair wild. “I meant to take you on a date, I swear, but no, you just had to write me fucking bespoke porn and then come here looking like that.” Patrick waves a hand in front of Pete’s face.

“Like what?” Pete asks. It’s not like he dressed up or straightened his hair or anything. He’s wearing washed black jeans, a Ramones tee and a shitty hoodie he got at shitty American Apparel. His hair is a mess and he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days.

“Like, like… you. Jesus fucking Christ.” Patrick blushes adorably and hides his face into the hand he was gesturing with. (It’s the cleaner one, luckily.)

Pete wants to write an entire novel about Patrick. His skin is like the inside of a sea-shell, pale mother-of-pearl, flushing pink high on his cheeks and on the tips of his ears and down his neck. His hair is copper, molten in fine strands, too long and falling over his bright aquamarine eyes. But then, Pete thinks, he’s already writing a novel about Patrick, or maybe _to_ Patrick. He couldn’t find the other voice for _Folie_, the You, a counterpoint to his I, because he couldn’t acknowledge that it had been Patrick the whole time. It’s always been Patrick, since the first time they talked, and even before. Before, Pete was just waiting.

Patrick is still grumbling under his voice about werewolves and biting kinks. Pete takes his hand, thread their fingers together, and rest his head on Patrick’s shoulder. “You know, taking it slow wasn’t such a bad idea,” he says.

Patrick tries sitting up, alarmed, saying, “What, do you–”

“Please, like I could ever regret this,” Pete scoffs, and doesn’t move his head, effectively forcing Patrick to keep still and be his pillow for a little longer. “I mean, you probably thought I was freaking out a bit, for, you know, the guy thing?”

“I thought that might be the case, yes.”

“Hmm,” Pete says, thinking about this as he goes along. “Maybe I was, a little bit, but mostly my crisis was before. Like, when I realized I was in lo–” He feels Patrick’s shoulder tense under his temple. “Yeah, I mean. I kinda already dealt with it. On my own. You know, inside my head. And writing it out. As I do. So, now my only problem is that I might be very bad at this, because I’ve never done anything. With guys. And that’s why taking it slow might have been good.”

“You’ve never done anything,” Patrick repeats. “Nothing at all? No ill-advised college hookups?”

“Nope,” says Pete. He shifts his head until he’s effectively hiding into the curve of Patrick’s neck and hopes they change the topic as soon as possible. And yes, he knows he’s the one who brought it up; that doesn’t mean he has to suffer through this for longer than is strictly necessary.

“It’s okay, we’ll figure it out,” says Patrick, and pushes Pete away lightly until they’re looking at each other. There’s a ring of gold warming up the deep blue of Patrick’s eyes; a sweet twist warming up his smile. Pete is all set, he would be happy to look at only those eyes, that smile, for a very long time. He’s wasted so much time looking at other things. He really needs to make it up.

“We have time,” he says, reaching up to curl his hand behind Patrick’s neck, to kiss him sweet and shallow and perfect. “You know, in all that fanfiction I read, the werewolves mate for life,” and before Patrick can tell him to fuck off, he pulls him in to kiss him again and again and again.

* * *

There is no mention of Pete’s editor in the acknowledgments for _I’ll Stop Wearing Black When They Make a Darker Colour_. The dedication page, however, reads:

_To Patrick. I’m sorry every story is about you._

**Author's Note:**

> I planned to end this story with a nice dose of smut and the Halloween launch party for Pete’s book, but I was losing my mind so it only has fluff. Sorry. I might write a coda later.
> 
> Thank you so much to the OP of [this amazing Tumblr post](https://writing-in-the-grave.tumblr.com/post/188109321365/correct-i-am-out-of-jokes) from which I borrowed Pete’s terrible writer jokes.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A handful of hopeful words](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23420116) by [AerPods (Aer)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aer/pseuds/AerPods)


End file.
